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If you choose to self-publish your own flash and short fiction on amazon, you’re going to find that you can’t just upload one flash story and sell it. Amazon has a minimum on minimum word count. Besides you want to give your reader enough bang for their buck (literal buck. I advise to keep your collections at 99 cents. You won’t be making a lot of money, its more to get your work out there and read).

So how do you decide what stories to put together? Well you have a lot of options. Some of these you may want to think about before you even start writing. Collections can be tied together in many ways.

1. Theme. Using one theme, tell many different stories that reflect it, that examine it.

2. Character. Using one character, tell a bunch of stories about them.

3. Magic. Write a bunch of stories that explain and show off your magic system.

4. World. Write a bunch of stories that explain and show off your world.

5. Multi-linked. This is where each story that follows is linked to the one before it but not to any of the rest. For example my first story is about elves. The second story is also about elves but has the theme of light always conquers the darkness. The next short wouldn’t have elves but would examine the same theme of light and darkness. And so forth.

6. Genre. The only thing linking the stories is a similar genre, especially if you focus on a sub-genre.

Another thing you can do that can help sell your other self-published (or even traditionally published) longer works is making short story collections that reflect an aspect of your theme, world, characters, magic systems or all of the above of the longer work. This lets people “try out” your story without putting down a lot of money. It can also make them fall in love with your work and make it impossible not to purchase more.

So whether or not you use your short fiction to promote any other writing you do, short story collections can be a lot of fun to both make and sell.

Has anyone self-published their short fiction work? How did you do it and how well did it do?